Blood Runs Thicker by Sarah Hawkswood (best electronic book reader txt) 📗

‘You think if he had killed his father he would hide it in his mind?’ Walkelin looked very confused.

‘I just don’t know, young Walkelin. Years ago, when I was in your place, a young woman was attacked one evening by the river. She was found wandering in the street by a priest called to administer the Last Rites to some soul departing. There was blood on her, some of it her own, her clothes were torn and it was clear she had been raped. In her hand, still held so tight it had to be prised from her grip, was her knife. We found the body of a man down by the wharves, half naked, stabbed many times, and his face clawed. The tale told itself. The weird thing was, the woman denied it was her, denied she had been harmed, and said she had gone to the river to cool her feet after a hot day and then returned home. She had no explanation of her injuries or the knife other than perhaps she had fallen and hurt herself. She was not mad, but everything to do with what happened was gone, utterly. My serjeant and the lord Sheriff agreed that nothing would be said further. There were no witnesses bar the priest finding the woman, and the dead man was some passing sailor from one of the Severn boats with none to mourn or seek wergild or any other justice. In fact, he got what he deserved, and the woman’s good name was not torn from her. Fortunately the bastard left no child in her, and she wed the next year. It sounds madness, but it is true as I stand here. I wondered if the lordling Hamo would be like that, if he had snapped and acted.’

‘But the young woman you speak of must have been, in every sense, out of her mind with fear and her act self-defence.’ Bradecote shook his head. ‘I cannot see Hamo going red-mist killing mad when he accidentally met his father upon the track, and besides, he would know as well as anyone the man’s habit, so any meeting would have been planned, in cold blood.’

‘And he said he went towards the north, my lord,’ added Walkelin.

‘He did. If he is responsible, then he is both very cunning and very bold. He strikes me as neither. Which leaves us where? Hoping we find some reason in the hatred of two neighbours.’

‘Do we make sure everyone here, on the manor, was seen and accounted for, my lord?’ Walkelin was always thorough.

‘We should, though I doubt they will thank us for interrupting their labours, and Baldwin de Lench will stamp and shout. I know sense says discount them first and then look further afield, but since there is small chance of our killer being out with a sickle today, I think we go to visit the manors of Flavel and Bishampton. At the very least we will give them news they will rejoice at, if they loathed him as the lady said.’

The trio retraced their steps, pausing briefly so that Catchpoll could show the now barely distinguishable traces in the ground where Osbern de Lench was killed. Walkelin and Catchpoll went straight to the stable to make ready the horses, and Bradecote headed into the hall, to inform the lady de Lench that they would be absent until the evening meal, upon the lord sheriff’s business. More than that she need not know.

‘The thing is,’ said Catchpoll, pensively, as they rode north, ‘if Walter Pipard and Raoul Parler have been at such odds with the lord of Lench and the breach so open, why did not the lord Baldwin suggest that they had a hand in the death?’

‘Because he wants to see his brother hang?’ Walkelin frowned. ‘But if he is likely to send him to the brothers at Evesham he would be as good as dead anyway.’

‘The cowl does not appeal then, Walkelin?’ Bradecote laughed. ‘As good as dead, eh!’

‘I mean no disrespect to the monks, but … other than a payment gift as he entered, there need never be anything after between the two brothers. I cannot see Baldwin riding often to Evesham to ask after his health, and the lordling Hamo seems to have no interest in the manor or its folk, even kin. He would put them from his thoughts. Other than the gift there would be no difference between burying him within an abbey and in the earth.’

‘And thus avoid damning his immortal soul with the mark of Cain.’ Bradecote urged his grey to a trot. ‘Makes sense, but I get the feeling Baldwin would like to see the lady de Lench distraught, not least because she is not so over her dead husband, and having her son at a rope’s end would do that. Oh well. Let us find out about Parler and Pipard, and forget the strange Hamo de Lench for a while.’

The manor at Flavel was well kept. It had an orderliness to it, as though it was swept daily. As with the other manors in the district, it was almost deserted, with all that could lend a hand out with the harvesting. The palisade about the lord’s hall had new wood, a pale block among the aged oak timbers where a second gateway had been filled in, and Bradecote guessed it was a manor where defence had become unimportant over the years until the dispute between King Stephen and the Empress Maud made having two points of ingress one too many for security. The single remaining gateway was shut. He came before it and announced his name and office, loudly. After a few moments he heard a voice, and the sound of a bar lifting. It would be but a short one that a single man might lift, not a major barricade of defence. The first gate opened a